Because Iran is famous not only for its rich heritage and repressive regime, but also for its passionate embrace of all things A Flock of Seagulls*.

Alright, so I'm kinda stuck in Perth for the moment. Only for a few weeks mind, but still. One does notice a certain... lack, when it comes to Perth's daily news media options. On the one side we have The West Australian, which is to serious news as telling your parents you have syphilis is to cheery dinnertime conversation. Seriously, The West went through a multi-year period where they refused to put anything more substantial than a two-word headline on the front page i.e. "BIKIE TERROR", "CHILD'S TERROR" or "FUCKING TERRIFYING". And then, on the other side, you have the purportedly reputable The Australian, a broadsheet that has spent the last decade skewing so far to the right that I wouldn't be all that surprised if they ran an editorial with the headline "Kill 'em all, let God sort 'em out". Thank you Rupert Murdoch.

As a result, shift or not, I grew up on The Australian. The West is REALLY bad. However, it did mean that I was forced to bear witness to this inexorable political change, even if I did try my best to wear it with a certain glumness. But if there is one man who truly emblematises this shift in The Australian's affiliations, it surely must be Greg Sheridan, the Foreign Affairs editor of The Australian for 18 years and counting. And while perhaps a once rational man, Greg seemed to treat the attacks of September 11 as a personal assault on him and his family and, as a result, went absolutely insane. Just like The Punisher. It's been hectic. In 2008 this worldview extended to writing not one, but TWO whole articles praising Sarah Palin's grasp of foreign relations.

Good lord.

Today, though, the topic was Iran, and the seeming inevitability of Iran procuring a nuclear weapon. This is, actually, probably inevitable. It will also, probably, not literally be the end of the world, although if you read Mr. Sheridan's piece, you'd think we were this close to having to reintroduce the "Duck and Cover" methodology into schools



I can't help but feel that turtle will have a tactical advantage over the dude hiding under the newspaper when the nuclear apocalypse finally kicks in.

So, to counter this useless eschatological (your word of the day - try and use it 5 times in conversation) alarmism, here's a step-by-step breakdown of certain of Greg's emptier arguments.

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"STAND by for some bad news. No, I mean really bad news."

Boy George is DEAD?!?!?!

"The world is not going to apply crippling sanctions to Iran. Even if it did, Iran would not be deterred from developing nuclear weapons"

Oh. I was way off. Alright Greg, I'm listening, tell us why this is so bad.

"The truth is that history is littered with states behaving irrationally and pursuing irrational ends, and doing so in often self-destructive ways. In Mao's China tens of millions of people died in famines directly caused by state policy. North Korea has driven its people into starvation. Pol Pot not only committed genocide on his own people, he then attacked Vietnam so that it would destroy him. Saddam Hussein was such a canny, realist calculator of the odds that his regime ended up gone and he ended up dead"

Yes, but history is very rarely littered with examples of leaders doing something that would absolutely ensure their own destruction. Dictators generally, above all else, want to stay alive. Probably so they can enjoy the many perks of being a dictator. Being a dictator: where every day is jacuzzi day.

And to be honest, I think Saddam Hussein played his cards quite well. After Kuwait, he turned his attentions to his own people, had very little to do with terrorists, didn't try and produce WMDs and he still found himself deposed by George W. Bush, at immense political, economic and human cost to the US. If we can learn anything from that, it's that the United States cannot be trusted to pursue rational ends. Perhaps we should confiscate their nuclear weapons...

"Iran believes the US is the Great Satan and Israel the little Satan."

No, Iran's leadership says that, and even they probably don't believe it. When faced with domestic unrest, it always makes sense to try and make the populace fear an outsider. It's a good way of keeping control. And ensuring that every day remains jacuzzi day. But the gap between this brand of rhetoric and actually firing a nuclear weapon at Israel is about as vast as the gap between me and Lil' Wayne.



... I was bald. I was using somebody else's hair as my own.

"Its leadership came to power with intensely theocratic political programs. There is no evidence it has ever deviated from the idea of achieving nuclear weapons."

But this also goes for the gap between having nuclear weapons and using them. For example, North Korea actually has nuclear weapons. North Korea. Possessed by religion they may be, but at least the Iranians aren't led by a man who requires teachers to tell children that he doesn't actually defecate. If there is one man on Earth that might actually fire a nuclear weapon in a fit of pique, that man is definitely Kim Jong-Il.

Sheridan later says Iran's is a "robust dictatorship", and it certainly has done a lot to suppress open dissent, but if the coverage of the protests surrounding last year's elections has shown us anything, it's that the hostile theology of Iran's leaders isn't necessarily shared by the Iranian people. Thus it would be the brave, brave Ayatollah who decided he was going to try and use his nuclear weapon for anything aside from idle saber-rattling. That is, if the Ayatollah (more like AyaLOLlah!!!!!... I'll let myself out) really does believe in the supremacy of the Iranian nation, then he is  quite unlikely to get all nuclear in Israel's grill and thereby ensure his own deposition and/or complete physical obliteration.

If we are to accept, as Greg does, the argument that Iran's possession of nuclear weapons is inevitable, than I'd say the only sensible option is to continue to try and subtly stoke an internal rebellion so as to remove the less predictable elements of the regime and then simply rely on the general principle that most people - Muslims included - don't want themselves and their families to die in a ball of fire and radiation.

Also, it might be worth installing a McDonalds in Tehran. As Thomas Friedman has pointed out in his Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention, it is almost unheard of for one country with a McDonalds to attack another. Probably because their existential angst has been sated by the availability of such affordable but tasty food and food-related products.

"Israel just might strike, but my guess is the world will dither and wake up one brand new day to a Tehran that encompasses the possibility of the destruction of us all."

Much like the day we woke up to the US, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, France, Britain and, of course, North Korea encompassing the possibility of the destruction of us all. This sentence would probably work better if Sheridan attached some reverb to the final word.

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So, Greg Sheridan. A scion of needless angst and endless agitation. Much like, perhaps, Iran itself? Either way, if I were you I wouldn't trust him with a second-hand car. Or a second-hand political belief, but it might be too late for that. OH, BURN!

Yeah, but we'll probably be fine.

* I may, or may not, have made this up.